Which version of bzr to use?

[Matt Nordhoff]

J. Bobby Lopez wrote:
> I'm using bzr v1.3.1 from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS right now.  I
> planning on sticking with the latest bzr available in ubuntu
> for production use, because it gives me a good indication of
> how stable that version of bzr is, and how backward
> compatible it might be in the event of an upgrade.  Does
> anyone see any problems with this, or should I be trying to
> stick to the latest version of bzr off the website?
> 
> Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Every version of bzr is as stable and backwards compatible as possible.
Ubuntu 8.04 includes 1.3.1 because it was the latest release at the
time, not because it's any better than other releases.

What worries do you have about backwards compatibility? The command line
UI doesn't get backwards-incompatible changes frequently. If they're
going to make an incompatible change to bzrlib, there will usually be
deprecation warnings for a few releases first. When new disk formats are
added, the old ones are not removed. And anyway, you'll have to deal
with the exact same issues whether you upgrade now or if you wait until
the next Ubuntu release.

By using 1.3.1, you're missing out on six months of new features, bug
fixes and performance improvements. Of course, you're also avoiding six
months of new bugs and the occasional performance regression. ;-)

Make whichever decision you want to. 1.3.1 is a perfectly good release,
but so is 1.9, and 1.10 will be too. If 1.3.1 is working well for you,
so be it, but you may like some of the new changes.

BTW, there's an apt repository for Bazaar at
<https://launchpad.net/~bzr/+archive>, so keeping up-to-date is not
difficult.

Hmm...yeah. Did that make sense? :-)
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